Dell S2415H Review: 24-inch IPS Monitor

This black, ultra-thin bezel monitor will fascinate you with its image quality and color accuracy, especially for the money that you paid for it. It’s callled the Dell S2415H and it’s a great monitor for the price. Its thin bezel of only 6.05mm makes the monitor look as if didn’t have a frame at all, which makes it ideal for multi-display. The screen is glossy which gives colors a more expressive tone. It’s very easy to clean and the cover is basically scratch-proof. Here’s the product specifications for the Dell S2415H monitor, which is a solid 1080p IPS monitor with a great design as well.

Most of the monitors have either a matte or a glossy screen cover and while both covers have their advantages, it comes down to personal preference when choosing between the two. The matte finish will entirely eliminate light reflection and glare but give the screen a darker tint, while a glossy cover might give you trouble with the sunlight but provide a more clear picture. The DELL S2415H has an anti-reflective 3H hard coating but as it has a glossy cover you will have to carefully adjust the lighting in your room. In order to get the clearest and most smooth picture possible, you should place your monitor so that it avoids any direct light.

The very thin bezel makes the monitor’s screen emphasized and gives brilliant movie watching and video game playing experience. The bottom bezel is a bit thicker (17mm), so if you were to place one or more of these monitors next to each other for a multi-display you could still have a fulfilling image while watching a single monitor individually.

The monitor is made with eco-friendly materials. The glass is arsenic-free, LED panel is mercury free and laminates are BFR/PVC-free. This contributes to the low power consumption of 18w typical, 36w maximum and 0.5w in the standby mode. The exclusive Power Nap feature allows you to automatically send your monitor to sleep mode if you’ve enabled screensaver on your desktop, however, you will need to disable Windows’ own hibernate and sleep features.

The IPS panel offers viewing angles of 178 degrees horizontal and vertical which means that you will be able to enjoy watching movies with more people in the room; everyone will have a flawless viewing experience no matter at what angle or distance they’re looking at the screen.

The monitor has built-in power adapters, an HDMI, a VGA and a 3.55mm audio jack on the back of the monitor. The inputs are facing downward which will make the connecting of cables a bit tricky but once they’re connected they will stay put. However, this makes the extra MHL mobile port hard to reach when you want to quickly connect it.

In the box of the DELL S2415H monitor, you will receive a cable cover, a power cable, a power adapter, an HDMI cable, a quick start guide, a safety information, drivers, and other documentation. Moreover, the stand and the stand riser come detached from the monitor, but they are easily put together and within minutes of unpacking you will be able to enjoy the brilliant image. The box of the monitor is very practical and can be reused when you need to move your monitor someplace else.

What do users like about this product?

VESA Mount Compatible

Color Accuracy

OSD Menu

The built-in speakers

The DELL S2415H monitor is VESA mount compatible if you choose to place it on the wall. By removing the stand of the monitor you will be able to locate the VESA mount locks and easily and safely put it in the desired place.

Like most of the IPS panels, The DELL S2415H IPS monitor delivers stunning and accurate colors needed by various professional designers, photographers, and editors. You can be assured that what you do in the image editing software will come out printed just the way you saw it on the screen. The level of colors that can be displayed amounts to 85% color gamut1.

As per usual, DELL offers a wide range of adjustable settings in the user-friendly menu. There are four touch-sensitive buttons which can be used to navigate through presets, adjust volume, enter and exit the menu. The presets include Standard, Multimedia, Movie, Game, Paper, Warm, Cool and Custom Color in which you can manually adjust the levels of RGB colors. For watching movies and playing games be sure to select the fitting preset as the Dynamic Contrast Ratio feature is only available in the Game and Movie presets.

The power LED shines in a white color when the monitor is on and blinks when it’s in the standby mode. You can easily disable this in the OSD menu if you find it distractive. Although the buttons of the DELL S2415H are touch-sensitive, they’ve proved to be quite responsive.

Additionally, in the menu, you can adjust aspect ratios (4:3, 5:3 and native 16:9), color, sharpness, response time, brightness, contrast and input source. In the top left angle, you will notice an energy use bar which shows how much energy you’re using depending on the settings you have set.

When selecting response time you can choose between Normal and Fast modes. Remember to use the fast mode only when playing video games as picture quality degrades when in the fast mode. This will be automatically adjusted between presets, so set them accordingly as they do provide you with the ideal settings depending on your activity on the screen. All settings can individually be restored to factory settings if you accidently make a mistake.

The built-in speakers of the DELL S2415H display provide 6w of quality audio. Still not quite as good as a standard set of good stereo speakers but as a secondary accessory, they offer more than a solid listening experience. The volume can be easily adjusted using the OSD buttons and you can even connect a mobile device to the MHL port and play music while your device is charging. There are additional audio line-in and headphones ports available. Now let’s move on with our Dell S2415H review about the stuff that people don’t like about this particular well-designed monitor.

What do users not like about this product?

Lack of ergonomics

Slow response time

IPS Glow

Minor adjustments out of the box

While the DELL S2415H PC screen can be tilted by 5 degrees forward and 21 degrees backward, it lacks other ergonomic functionalities. Since this monitor is most likely going to be picked by professional and aspiring photographers, the lack of the ability to pivot the screen into the portrait position is a drawback. Furthermore, it cannot be height adjusted but you can always place something under the monitor, right?

Some reviewers complained about the response time of 6ms being too slow. As this is not primarily a gaming monitor, the response time is more than fast enough. Average gamers will not notice the speed of response time in casual gaming while professional and competitive players will since they might encounter minor blurring and ghosting of fast moving objects in video games. Moreover, the input lag of around 5ms and only 60Hz rate will disinterest professional gamers in the first place. Still, the image quality and acceptable response time will make your casual gaming experience appear much more beautiful than if you were to use a TN panel with 1ms response time.

The known issues of the IPS panels are the occasional IPS glow and image burns. While there are no cases of image burns reported for the DELL S2415H monitor, some minor IPS glow was present in our case, however, you may notice the slight glow only near the edges of the screen while looking at a completely black background.

In more demanding games such as Battlefield 4, you may experience difficulty in clearly seeing objects that are near the edge of the screen and in dark areas. This is due to the IPS glow and the glossy surface. Moreover, the DELL S2415H lacks some sort of black color stabilizer feature which is mandatory for gaming monitors. However, the wide range of colors will deliver more vivid and lifelike image in games than any TN panel gaming monitor would.

When hooked up straight out of the box, the DELL S2415H screen is in the Standard Mode. This mode has a somewhat too bright picture in which deepest black colors may appear as dark gray. You may either manually lower the brightness level or opt for the Multimedia preset by a few clicks on the touch-sensitive buttons. The multimedia mode has an overall well-balanced setting which offers comfortable viewing experience for the everyday use of your computer.

Additionally, you should use the ‘Paper preset’ which has a significantly lower level of the blue light. This preset is ideal for reading in the evening and when you want to rest your eyes.

Who is this product for?

The DELL S2415H display will provide professional and aspiring designers with everything that they might need for their work. In addition, you will able to enjoy in casual gaming and watching movies with a beautiful picture with rich colors. Competitive and professional gamers will, on the other hand, need to look for a gaming monitor with a TN panel and quicker response time of 1ms. This 60hz monitor is ideal for families and everyday use as it is affordable and offers exceptional image quality with many useful and unique features such as solid speakers, decent connectivity and well-optimized presets for all purposes.

Dell S2415H Review

Design - 7.9/10

7.9/10

Display - 8.6/10

8.6/10

Performance - 8.8/10

8.8/10

Price/Value - 9.2/10

9.2/10

Summary

Whether you're an aspiring designer or simply wish for a high-quality monitor with brilliant picture quality and accurate colors for everyday use, casual gaming and watching movies, you will be completely satisfied with this monitor for a reasonable price. Competitive gamers should check this gaming TN panel monitor with 1ms response time, the BenQ RL2460HT, and for ascended 144Hz gamers, check out the AOC G2460PF gaming monitor.